WWALS Watershed Coalition advocates for conservation and stewardship of the Withlacoochee, Willacoochee, Alapaha, Little, and Suwannee River watersheds in south Georgia and north Florida through education, awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen activities.

Tag Archives: Texas

This “special foam”: yes, it’s probably the same
toxic PFAS chemicals
spilled
at the Ocala, FL firefighting school and at Moody AFB near Valdosta, GA.
Massive ammounts of it were used at the ITC tank farm,
with its own docks on Buffalo Bayou into Burnet Bay,
leading to Galveston and the Gulf.
Then a massive storm hit, closing that Houston Ship Channel and stopping cleanup operations.
It’s so bad even the state of Texas and Harris County are suing ITC.
Meanwhile, whoever heard of a solar farm fire?

Valdosta, GA, September 13, 2018 —
This morning
two landowners from Moultrie, Colquitt County, Georgia, and the Bell brothers
of a subject property in Mitchell County, Georgia,
all settled with Sabal Trail Transmission about payment
for easements for a 36-inch natural gas pipeline through their land.

Defendant Jeb Bell said afterwards,

I am extremely unhappy, but such is life.

We fought as good as we could for as long as we could.

The defendants’ attorney Jonathan P. Waters had no comment
on the confidential settlement of these cases.

These cases were originally filed by Sabal Trail Transmission
against Georgia landowners in March 2016,
invoking federal eminent domain supplied to Sabal Trail
by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on February 2, 2016.
The pipeline has since been built through the defendants’ land
with no agreement and no payment.

Attorney Jonathan P. Waters had some new questions this time
for the same old
Sabal Trail witnesses from last time.
The trial continues this morning; see you there.

Gil Norman, Sabal Trail Right of Way Manager, who at $200,000 a year has made more than $1 million off of helping Sabal Trail get easements to “use as we see fit in our absolute discretion.“; Michael Fletcher, Engineering Specialist, who said Sabal Trail put thicker pipe on land that might be developed (so thinner on farmland) and pipe probably would have less top cover under dips between hills; and property appraiser Carl Schultz, who “summarized the summaries” of eleven papers, at least one paid for by a pipeline company.

And different defendants, pictured here going into the building yesterday morning.

FERC, if it follows its own rules, should reject the DSEIS, stop Sabal Trail, and revoke its permit, says a motion filed today with FERC by Suwannee Riverkeeper.

Followup blog posts will feature major sections and arguments from these 20 pages with their 93 footnotes.
The basic arguments are summarized on the first page:

WWALS argues that no SEIS can be complete without accounting for GHG
from Liquid Natural Gas (“LNG”) exports, nor without
comparing natural gas to solar power, according to precedents
already set by FPL, FERC, and others, which also reopen the whole
basis of the FERC 2016 Order.

FERC may not care, but the D.C. Circuit Court may, or candidates
for office, or the voting public.

Asked why a pipeline dispatcher apparently told the fire department
that “this was a new system and they are still
learning,” Grover responds that “it would be illogical
to speculate as to what the fire department has quoted as part of a
conversation.”

Or are those just Pinocchio donkey ears?
That would be more logical.

Who do you believe?
A local county fire department, or someone paid by a pipeline company
to put the best face on any event?
Especially when she didn’t actually deny anything Marion County Fire Rescue reported?

The Sabal Trail Pipeline, a new natural gas pipeline that critics
have charged is uncomfortably close to Florida’s main aquifer,
“operated safely throughout Hurricane Irma,” a
spokesperson with the pipeline operator tells ConsumerAffairs.

“We were and continue to be able to meet any customer
needs,” says an email from Andrea Grover of Enbridge Energy,
the natural gas company behind the Sabal Trail Pipeline.
“Operations was not affected by the hurricane impacts.”

Andrea Grover’s linkedin page
lists her as
“Director, Stakeholder Outreach at Enbridge (Oil & Gas)”.
For four years we were told the pipeline’s “stakeholders”
were landowners along the way.

But is Sabal Trail even serving those customers well?
Cody Suggs reported yesterday from the Hildreth Compressor Station site
near O’Brien, in Suwannee County, Florida, that power is still off there
and it took two days for trees to be cleared off the access road.

Natural gas began flowing through the Sabal Trail Pipeline in June
2017. People like John Quarterman, a Georgia landowner and activist
with WWALS Watershed Coalition, a group that aims to protect
watersheds in Georgia and Florida, say that federal regulators are
typically asleep at the wheel for these projects.

“We have this 500-mile improvised explosive device, under our
rivers, next to our schools and next to people’s houses and nobody
is handling pipeline safety,” he tells ConsumerAffairs.

Florida’s landscape is characterized by
karst terrain, or land made of porous limestone, caverns, and water
dissolving into the bedrock, all of which are a recipe for
sinkholes. Man-made infrastructure can increase the chance of a
sinkhole forming, and so can intense rain.

“Man-induced sinkholes typically involve collapse of old mine
workings, drainage infrastructure or other underground
workings,” explained meteorologist Jim Andrews in one recent
report. “Naturally, such can fail over time, and rainfall can
be a major factor.”

In fact, at least four homes have been evacuated in central Florida
this week after sinkholes formed in the wake of Hurricane Irma,
according to reporters on the scene. Still, Enbridge Energy says
that their pipeline can handle sinkhole-prone terrain.

“While opposition has raised the issue of the pipeline being
constructed in karst terrain, this was thoroughly examined by the
appropriate federal and state agencies,” responds Enbridge
representative Andrea Grover by email. “They concluded it was
unlikely that Sabal Trail would impact springs or the Floridan
Aquifer in the karst regions. Sabal Trail is well equipped to safely
construct and operate the pipeline in karst areas.”

Violations Sabal Trail and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP)
told us would not happen,
under oath in WWALS vs. Sabal Trail & FDEP (October 2015),
have already been happening.

But Quarterman says he does not trust the company to voluntarily
report any issues that may arise. Activists with his group who live
along the pipeline route have been tracking the project themselves,
both before and after Hurricane Irma, to make sure no leaks,
sinkholes underneath the pipeline, or any other issues have
occurred.

“Once the court officially returns the matter to FERC, the
pipeline should cease operations while FERC undertakes the new
analysis,” wrote Elly Benson, lead
attorney for the case Sierra Club just won against Sabal Trail.

She summed up: ”Instead of sacrificing our communities and
environment to build unnecessary pipelines that “set up
surefire profits” for pipeline companies at the expense of
captive ratepayers, the focus should be on transitioning to clean
renewable energy and energy efficiency—especially in the
Sunshine State. Forcing federal agencies to grapple with the true
climate impacts of dirty fossil fuel projects is a big step in the
right direction.”

She leads off this fourth in a WWALS news roundup series
(1,
2,
3) about that case, followed by Gordon
Rogers, Flint Riverkeeper, another party to the case.

WWALS is not a party to that case and does not speak for the
parties, so I can be a cheerleader for them. Shut it down! Let the sun rise!

OilPrice.com calls it “a critical decision yesterday,
that could jeopardize the future for pipeline projects across the country”;
pipeline companies could be “spooked” and
“…the court ruling raises the unsettling
possibility that the project may be forced to shut down —
after billions were spent putting it in into service.”
Other stories say this ‘huge’ win could also affect
the Atlantic Sunrise, Penneast, Atlantic Coast, and Rover Pipelines,
among others.

(L to R) Lea Fox, 4, Finn Ryder Purdy, 4, and Mason Dana, 7, of Lake
Worth, sit with gas pipeline protesters outside of Florida Power and
Light headquarters on Universe Boulevard in Juno Beach on October
14, 2016. The Sabal Trail Pipeline began supplying FPL’s plants in
June. Groups opposed the pipeline that will start in Alabama and
bring fracked gas through several counties in Florida’s springs and
wetlands. (Richard Graulich / The Palm Beach Post)

Sad for FPL, Duke, Spectra, and all the other pipeline-building
purveyors of fracked methane, maybe, but glad for all the
landowners whose land was taken, local citizens who don’t want
a 500+-mile IED next to their homes, schools, and waterways,
and all people who want clean sun and wind energy, not more polluting fossil fuels.

It’s good the industry press agrees with what I told the VDT:
“This is wind in our sails and could be the end of Sabal Trail.”

To the Canadian-owned company that now owns Sabal Trail:
rural lives matter.
No eminent domain for corporate gain.
And Houston, you have a problem.

That would be Enbridge of Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
which bought Spectra Energy of Houston, Texas,
which is the builder and operator of the Sabal fracked methane Trail pipeline,
now renamed Sabal Fail by locals.